Ex. 1. Read the text and translate it using a dictionary
What makes a great teacher?
We never forget our best teachers - those who imbued us with a deeper understanding, the educators who opened doors and altered the course of our lives, the ones we come back to visit years after graduating. What qualities and capacities do they possess? Can these abilities be measured? Can they be taught?
There's no magic formula for what makes a good teacher, but there is general agreement on some of the prerequisites.
Listening. Many great teachers hold to the philosophy that teaching is primarily listening and learning is primarily talking. They develop elaborate techniques to encourage students to express fearlessly their thoughts, observations, and questions. They listen with extreme attention, carefully clarify misconceptions, and redirect energy, but mostly, they listen because they care.
Patience. Patience is a virtue great teachers must possess. The readiness to accept and work with students on their own level, even if it's frustrating at times, and the willingness to "try, try again" when the first few attempts at instruction fail are essential to the art of teaching.
Respect. An atmosphere of mutual respect between teacher and students is crucial in the classroom. Great teachers understand that respect is something they have to give in order to receive. Because they value the minds (and the personalities) they are helping to shape, treating students with courtesy, consideration, and regard is fundamental to their personal interaction in and out of the classroom.
Creativity. Breathing life and excitement into the daily chores of school life calls for a bottomless well of creativity and the best teachers seem to have access to one. Rarely fixed in their methods and typically willing to follow up on new inspirations rather than resist them, great teachers trust their creative instincts and search for alternative, more effective ways to present lessons to students.
Leadership. Successful leadership involves formulating a goal, assuming responsibility for reaching it, and inspiring students to do the same.
Dedication. A great teacher's dedication has two distinct parts. First, the teacher is devoted to students and determined to help them learn and grow. Second, he or she is strongly committed to professional development. Always up-to-date on the latest research and passionately involved in academic conversations with peers, dedicated teachers know that professionalism and achievement aren't limited by the four walls of the classroom.
Deep knowledge of one's subject is especially required in the higher forms. According to research on teacher efficacy the higher the grade, the more closely student achievement correlates to a teacher's expertise in her or his field.
Enthusiasm. Students need inspiration and enthusiastic teachers provide it. Because they are happily engaged with their work, their passion and excitement is contagious and their students reap enormous benefits.
Ethics. First, do no harm. These words, made famous in the Hippocratic oath in medical practice, apply to teachers as well. Teachers hold their students' self-esteem, confidence, and academic vulnerability in their hands. They can inspire but, unfortunately, they can also crush. Great teachers remain acutely aware of ethical issues and difficulties in the classroom.
Imagination. The mysterious power of the imagination allows a great teacher to see each student's rich potential. Only then can teacher and student become cocreators of the student's new identity. This faith in a student's positive attributes and abilities permits teachers to challenge, push forward, and expect more. At the same time, it encourages students to pursue goals they might never have attempted.
Ex. 2. Read the text and be ready to answer the questions after the text:
Teaching
Teaching is a very difficult job of great responsibility and most specific character. There is a wide variety of work in teaching. A good teacher is not only a communicator of knowledge, but a model of competence. He forms attitudes to his subject and attitudes to learning, becoming himself a symbol of education process, a person who is learning as well as teaching. While communicating with children a teacher studies them closely to discover their interests, their strengths and weaknesses, their needs, and abilities. Thus a good teacher always regards capacities his pupil have, trying to temper his teaching methods to children's abilities and aptitudes. He builds his work upon what he learns about his children.
An environment should be created to stimulate children to develop their abilities and satisfy their interests. Climate of a classroom depends on the nature of personal relationships between a teacher and his pupils. These relationships should be founded on respect for a person. Thus a primary condition of creating a good atmosphere in class is that everybody in it respects everybody in it. Teacher's authority will be ensured by respect of his pupils, because his knowledge and skill are greater and better coordinated and his thinking is as: a higher level than that of his pupils. His commands are likely to be respected and obeyed then.
It is a purpose of education to liquidate ignorance. But it is also the function of education to help children to live in the community, to prepare them for real life situations. Social development is paid just as much attention to as intellectual development. School becomes a place of work and play, of living and learning. A teacher takes an active part in shaping of child's character, fostering honesty, kindness, loyalty, cooperation and respect for ideals.
Quintihan, the prominent Roman school master, wrote in his "Institutes Oratory", published about 95 AD the following about a teacher and his work: "Let him adopt a parental attitude to his pupils. Let him be free from vice himself. Let him be strict but not austere, kind but not too familiar: for austerity will make him unpopular, while familiarity breeds contempt. He must control his temper without shutting his eyes to faults requiring correction. His instruction must be free from affection, his industry great, his demands on class continuous, but not extravagant. He must be ready to answer questions and to put them unasked to those who sit silent. In praising the answers of his pupils he must be neither grudging nor over-generous. In correcting faults he must avoid sarcasm and above all abuse to discourage industry.
Here is an exacting job, but those who are well equipped for it will have a happy and satisfying life.